Windows 10: Windows 10 has a keylogger?

I just found this story this morning regarding a possible keylogger in Windows 10.

Microsoft hit hard for Enabling Windows 10 built-in keylogger feature

Is this true?

Microsoft's explanation sounds a little hokey...

keystrokes are collected to improve handwriting and pronunciation recognition

Since when do keystrokes improve handwriting? They are two completely different things. And pronunciation refers to the "spoken word".

:)

 

Windows 10 upgrade makes my computer shut down randomly

I have the same issue. MY Windows 10 is a new OEM install. BECAUSE, last update fried my hardrive. So new SSD Drives, New OEM professional install and SINCE that install, nothing but random shutdowns. Professional diagnostic from a nationally known computer
center could not find anything. Thought it was a power cord issue. PLEASE UPDATE Windows 10. From the web searches I see Many Many people having this issue. SO, when it came time for my son to go off to college, we decided to buy him a MAC laptop.

 

Windows 10 Unexpected shutdown on start up

OK, so i figured it out myself

Found the logfile in "C:\Windows\Minidump".

You need the Windows Development Kit to open it and a bit of googling to understand it.

Found out that a Daemon driver caused an error. Removed Daemon but this didn't solve it. (ps: Daemon itself worked normally).

I let hibernate my computer again and found another error with sptd2.sys: SCSI Pass Through Direct layer

More google and ended up on the duplexsecure site. Downloaded the W10 version and voila: problem fixed.

For the Windows support team: It would be really helpfull if you could pass problems to a more skilled helpdesk who can do more than proposing the standard solutions in case those won't work.

Cheers

 

My setting (in privacy/general) is still set to off.

 

Likely for autocorrect when typing, and maybe Cortana? You could have your PC setup as English US but be typing in French or some other language. You don't want it autocorrecting everything to English. Just my best guess.

 

Even if there is a legitimate explanation from Microsoft, I don't want them monitoring my activities on my laptop. I have all the privacy settings set to "off". If I find one is justifiably needed, I can easily re-activate it. My advice ... just set all the privacy settings to "off". It's just not any of Microsoft's business what I do on my laptop. If they need data for improvement, let them gather it voluntarily, not by using default settings most don't know about.

 

Microsoft monitoring my PC usage is the least of my concerns. Most of that can be shut off, but the fact is that on the NET you have no expectancy of privacy. Your data is collected and stored by the NSA among others.

 

This is not a new issue, and has been argued about since early in Windows 10's lifetime. It's been discussed in this forum on several occasions.

The point here is that MS needs to send information to their servers to enable certain functionality, because the OS itself does not do the work (their servers do). This is the same thing as how when you use Siri, it actually listens 24x7 to everything going on around it and sends that data to Apple so it can analyze it, looking for commands. In effect, any apple device is essentially a "wiretap" bug. The same is true of Google devices with the "Hey google" feature, or even when you use the voice recognition functions.

MS doesn't retain that information after it is processed, but the privacy policy describes it anyways to be safe. This is just the way cloud services work, and more and more devices are using them.

 

And yet people can go months at a time without an internet connection....heck, there are probably some Windows 10 computers that have never been connected to the internet.

 

And those computers aren't benefiting from the cloud services provided. Simply put, modern devices have features that are cloud oriented. The inclusion of those features means that the privacy policy needs to include that, whether or not you're using them.

 

I ticked almost everything off.

 

Who gives a toss about the NSA. As far as I can tell their jurisdiction only applies in USA - the alleged land of the free - LOL.

Frankly our colonial cousins believe their own bs.

 

It's the same as on IOS and Android for all keyboards. I only have Android, so I don't know how exactly it works in IOS, but on Android the keyboard collects the same kind of info to improve typing and user experience. It's nothing new, and really it's being blown out of proportion. It's not like it's collecting exact sentences, emails, or texts. It just tracks your typing style to better predict and suggest better options. No one is sitting there reading texts or emails.

 

Disabling monitoring keyboard task will also disable any typing in Store, Start, Edge, Calc, etc.

schtasks /Change /TN "Microsoft\Windows\TextServicesFramework\MsCtfMonitor" /Disable
schtasks /End /TN "Microsoft\Windows\TextServicesFramework\MsCtfMonitor"

 

Actually it's just the opposite. The US NSA is supposed to have very limited jurisdiction within the USA and the vast majority of their data collection is supposed to be spying on other countries.